Numbers not Adjectives

In the words of Professor David Mackay, we need "numbers, not adjectives" to compare, understand and manage our country's energy supplies and our own energy demands.  In this spirit, here are two charts.

The first shows my family's energy use at home each year from 2006 to 2011.  For reasons I have made clear throughout this blog, we used 52% less energy in 2011 than in 2006.

The second chart shows the costs of this energy.

Sticking to Prof. Mackay's injunction, I will simply note that, despite increases in the unit costs we pay for energy over this period, our total bill for energy in 2011 was 38% smaller than we paid in 2006.

There are all sorts of issues, from fuel poverty to carbon emissions, that this comparison does not address.  The simple point that it illustrates well, however, is that individual efforts and investments to use energy more efficiently have a real impact on our energy bills.  If my family had used as much energy in 2011 as we did in 2006, our bills would have risen by 17% over this period - despite switching to a cheaper supplier at the end of 2008.

And the carbon emissions from our energy use?  I calculate that, in 2006, these amounted to 8 Tonnes CO2.  In 2011, our annual emissions were down to 3.6 Tonnes CO2.  The total reduction over five years (2007 - 11) amounts to 15.7 Tonnes.

This may not sound much compared with, for example, long-haul flights, but we haven't taken any of those in the last five years either.  Cutting carbon makes each and every part of life more sustainable, from holidays to heating, from commuting to computing and from diet to DIY.  Oh dear, I've forgotten the Professor's advice and slipped into rhetoric so I'd better stop and leave you to do the maths.

Simple Energy Saving at home

I was very pleased that Julian Worricker read out my email in full on Radio 4's "You & Yours" programme today.  You can Listen Again on iPlayer here, until Monday 16 May - around 46 minutes in.  Here's what I sent into the programme:

"It's worth all the effort to insulate, switch off and replace inefficient bulbs and appliances.  I have managed to cut my family's home electricity use in half, and our gas consumption by a third, since 2006.  The cost of insulation, light bulbs and an A+ refrigerator were quickly paid back and my energy bills are a third lower now than they were in 2006."

Of course, I couldn't provide the evidence behind this on the programme, so I will do this here.  I was also struck by Julian's response: he said, "That's very positive from his point of view but we don't all have the time to do that".  Accepting this viewpoint, the challenge is to make it so easy for people to use energy wisely in their homes that they find it only natural to cut waste and save money on their bills.

In 2006, our home used 30,400 kWh of energy: 21,200 units of gas and 9,200 of electricity.  This cost almost £1500.  Since then I have invested in great tranches of loft insulation, all shapes and sizes of energy-saving light bulbs, a condensing boiler, a solar thermal panel (the boiler has been off for weeks now), an efficient larder fridge and the 8 watt Fit-PC computer (strictly a net-top) that I am writing this blog on now.  We have also pulled together as a family to change our behaviour, switching everything off at the mains when not needed, keeping the thermostat down low in the winter and generally striving to avoid wasting energy.

2010 was an unusual year, starting and ending with prolonged spells of extreme cold.  As a result, our 2010 energy use was greater than expected.  However, 2011 has been unseasonably warm so far and our energy consumption since January has been 20% lower than the same period last year.  In the past 12 months, we have used a total of 17,200 kWh at home: 12,800 units of gas and 4,400 kWh of electricity.  This graph shows our annual energy costs, for gas and electricity, over the past five years.  I've also included my estimate for 2011 and we are on track to spend just £1000 on home energy this year:

The point of all this data is to make clear the savings to be had by using energy wisely.  If my family's power consumption had remained at 2006 levels, we would now be paying over £1,700 a year for our gas and electricity.  On the news today, Centrica warned that forward gas prices for next winter are 25% higher than they were at this time last year.  This makes it apparent that everyone's energy bills will rise - unless they act to reduce their usage!  The investments needed are one-off costs but the payback comes ever after - in my case,  a saving of £60 a month on the cost of home energy.  The higher the price, the bigger the saving.  What's stopping you, Julian?

The basics revisited

I've had so many people asking me for advice on saving energy, reducing emissions and consuming less in recent weeks. I do love advising people on these topics but, really, I'm delighted because it shows that many more people are becoming interested in reducing their own impact.

So here's my attempt to summarise the things that we can do to reduce our emissions from energy use at home.

I won't be able to get everything in but feel free to let me know anything important that I've missed. Other guides to the basics are available, such as this one from Tesco, but I'd recommend caution with any advice - for instance, Tesco claim that DAB digital radios save energy compared with your existing, analogue radio - the truth is precisely opposite.

Meters

Before you even start thinking about cutting your home energy use, please please PLEASE begin recording your meter readings on a regular basis! Monthly is ideal. Weekly if you're really into it, like me, or if you want to use i-measure to compare your energy and emissions with other, similar households.

If you can put your readings straight into a spreadsheet then you are well on the way to seeing exactly what benefit your energy-saving efforts are giving you. If not, just write them down in a small book or log-sheet and keep it in your meter cupboard. When you want to know how much you have saved, you'll have the all-important data to answer this question.

Heat

Our homes are responsible for over a quarter of Britain's carbon emissions while, altogether, buildings account for more than half our emissions. What works at home may well be applicable at work, in the shops or in public buildings across the country.

The biggest chunk of our home energy use in Britain goes on heating: both air (space) and water. Ultimately, this heat is all lost to the home's surroundings. Energy efficient heating involves slowing the rate at which our heat escapes, so that we can maintain a comfortable indoor temperature using less fuel and therefore less emissions.

The cheap and easy place to insulate in most houses, or top-floor flats, is your loft. I've posted lots of links to various types of loft insulation in this blog but, basically, any DIY store should have plenty of top-up insulation available at half price, or BOGOF, subsidised by the energy companies under their carbon reduction commitment. The recommended depth of loft insulation is now 275mm (call it a foot) but I've gone for 400mm over most of my loft, to make up for the storage areas where I have only got 200mm of rigid urethane foam. This works, in conjunction with reflective bubble-wrap on the rafters, to keep my water tank from freezing in winter.

Post-war houses typically have cavity walls and these need to be insulated. If yours haven't been done, you will find this an unbeatable investment - it will pay for itself in reduced energy bills in a couple of years! Older houses have solid walls, which are tougher to insulate. But all is not lost! If you're redecorating, it's the ideal opportunity to fit high-performance internal wall insulation. Although only 1 or 2 cm thick, these amazing materials can cut heat loss through your walls by as much as 25 cm of mineral wool loft insulation.

Doors and windows are, put simply, holes! To keep your warmth in, fit draught excluders to make sure that they fit securely. This is one of the cheapest DIY energy-saving methods. Nice thick curtains are great insulators and they turn south-facing windows into passive solar heaters, allowing the light and warmth in during the day but preventing it from escaping at night. Just so long as you use them.

Replacement windows and doors are much more expensive than draught excluders and curtains but replacing single-glazed windows and doors with double glazing will make your home warm and quiet and can be a good investment in maintaining the value of your home. The latest energy-efficient windows have cleverly-designed frames to prevent "thermal bridges" - parts of a building structure that conduct heat through the fabric of the building. At lower cost, secondary double glazing can be a fantastic investment and may be the only way to reduce heat loss from windows in listed buildings or conservation areas. Magneglaze polycarbonate panels fit inside your existing window-frames and are secured with magnetic strips. They cost £100-120 per square metre. They will reduce your energy bills and emissions, cut down external noise and reduce condensation. Of course, you could make your own secondary glazing - we used the ultimate cheap solution in our previous house, until we could afford to fit decent double glazing.

Other holes are responsible for heat loss as well. Chimneys, kitchen extractors, cat flaps, gaps round pipes and even air bricks. Ventilation is important but modern buildings, built to 'passivhaus' or even zero-carbon standards, are designed to be hermetically sealed. Ventilation is then provided deliberately, using ducted heat-recovery systems that bring fresh air in and pump stale, moist air out without losing its heat. I live right under the Heathrow flightpath and fitted one of these systems to my 1950s house in 2008. We have benefited in 3 ways: firstly, the energy savings from heat recovery and an airtight home (I have found and blocked up all the holes in our walls and around doors, windows and pipes). Second, clean, filtered air means less dust and smells in the house (and you should see the inlet filters when I change them every quarter). Finally, the ventilation system means that we can keep our windows closed at night and this means that we are not woken up by aeroplanes before dawn!

The last place to consider heat loss is through the floor but, as I am not prepared to raise the level of my home's floors, there is very little that I can do to cut this heat loss.

While space heating is very seasonal, we need hot water all year round. Solar water heating is a big investment (about the same as a new boiler) but it does enable you to shut down your boiler in the summer months. If you have a hot water cylinder, it pays to insulate it thoroughly - it should keep your water hot for 24 hours.

You can also save energy, and cut your emissions, by using less hot water when you shower. First, get used to turning off the shower water when you lather up. This technique is called a navy shower, and allows you to have a relaxing and effective shower while using running water for just 2 minutes in total. Second, fit a low-flow device such as this one from EAGA, available free in a government-funded energy-saving scheme.

Use your heating controls. Make sure that the hot water cylinder is fitted with a thermostat and that you set it to a lowish temperature, that is hot enough for showers / baths / washing up.

Lots of people prefer to keep their hot water "always on" which means that your heat loss from the cylinder is continuously at its worst. Instead, limit the time that the boiler runs - for both hot water and for central heating - because heating fuel consumption is, surprisingly, well correlated with running hours! It's also worthwhile replacing your room thermostat (the temperature dial) with a modern, "adaptive" thermostat. In my home, this saved 10% on the winter gas bill because it learns how your home responds to the boiler and prevents the room temperature from over-shooting and wasting fuel. Lastly, thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) can help to reduce heating bills by limiting the temperature in bedrooms or unused rooms. They can only do this if you adjust them to meet your needs. Don't have a TRV on the radiator nearest to your room thermostat - it will prevent the room 'stat from turning the boiler off when it should.

Light

Many of my earlier entries in this blog detail how to replace inefficient lights with energy saving alternatives. The variety is bewildering so I would just say here, make a start. Don't try and do it all at once. Pick on a type of lighting in your home and try one or two replacements. When you find the energy-efficient lighting solution that you like for that type of bulb, fit it to all instances of that light in your home. When you're ready for another round, pick on another type, and so on. I started in 2006, with the SBC (small bayonet) golfball bulbs that were all around my living and dining rooms. I moved on to ceiling mounted BC (bayonet) and ES (screw) bulbs and then tackled the mains halogen bulbs called GU10s.

Next came the fluorescent striplights over the kitchen counter and the filament striplights found in our drinks cabinet and lots of bathroom lights. Replacing these with LEDs was a big win, reducing power consumption of those lights by 90%.

Lastly, the plethora of low-voltage halogen lamps that have colonised our homes in the last 10 or 20 years. It is now becoming practical to replace these with LED bulbs but to obtain equivalent brightness to the commonest halogen lamps (50 watt) remains very pricey.

Appliances

After heating and lighting, our gadgets are the biggest energy consumers in our homes. Top of the league are WET appliances - washing machine, tumble drier and dishwasher. Minimise energy wastage by running them less often, waiting until they are fully loaded, and selecting a lower temperature. Your kettle also swallows up a surprising amount of energy for such a little feller - be sure to boil only as much water as you need.

Next comes COLD appliances - fridges and freezers. Any of these over 10 or 15 years old are likely to be costing you a fortune to run. My 1990 Zanussi larder fridge got through almost 800 units of electricity (kilowatt-hours or kWh) a year: its same-sized replacement runs on just 80 kWh a year! At a cost of less than £200, this new fridge has paid for itself within 3 years.

Thirdly, entertainment and IT are using an increasing proportion of our household electricity. The proliferation of little black plugs and in-line boxes shows how many transformers we have plugged into our sockets in recent years. They ALL need to be switched off at the wall when not in use because they all (apart from the very latest, super-green phone chargers) suck power from the grid 24/7, regardless of whether or not we are using them. Remote controls like Bye Bye Standby are great for lights and home entertainments but, for all the black boxes you have around the home, the best thing to do is to hunt them down and UNPLUG them. Just plug them in when you need them and pull them out when you're done. No cost and even a bit of aerobic exercise for free!

Specifically on IT, I am writing this blog on my Fit-PC 2. This magical machine (technical term, net-top) is a small block of aluminium, about the size of two fag packets side-by-side (I don't smoke but it's the best illustration), that runs Windows just as well as my old tower PC but consumes less than 10 watts! When I got it, I expected that it would only be good for email and spreadsheets but I've come to rely on it for all my digital photos, music (I run a Squeezebox sever on it the whole time), Skype, YouTube and even BBC iPlayer! It's not quite as quick as my old PC when it comes to playing DVDs but, to be honest, I don't want to do that on my PC.

Another brilliant gadget for power saving with your computer bits is called the Intellipanel. You plug your computer and all its peripherals into the panel and, when you shut down or hibernate your computer, it kills the power to all the peripherals. It has special sockets for external hard drives, so that these don't crash if they're still running when the PC stops. You can even switch the Intellipanel off at the wall when everything's off and, when you turn it back on, it is ready to detect when you press the power button on your PC for another online session. Magic!

This post has concentrated on reducing home energy use. In my next post, I will review other aspects of sustainability in everyday life in modern Britain, such as food, recycling and travel.

Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to get in touch: either leave a comment or email cutyourcarbon (at) gmail (dot) com - this is not a clickable link because I don't want lots of spam from automated crawler bots.

Two prizes in one week!

I am discovering how difficult it is to remember to post regular articles to a blog.  This time, I want to share my excitement at winning a couple of competitions for communicating sustainability.   

The first competition was won by my Scout Troop.  The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC-UK) got in touch with schools and Scout groups across the country and asked them to come up with imaginative activities for their young people, to mark their first annual awareness day on Friday 26 September.  This event was called, appropriately enough, FSC Friday.   

I designed a simulation game where the Scouts played the parts of Factories, Trees and Atmosphere. They used old CDs to represent oxygen molecules and paperclips played the part of carbon atoms.  The Factories burnt fossil fuels and released CO2 by clipping the paperclips to the CDs.  The Trees removed the paperclips and released O2. The Atmosphere ran around distributing O2 and CO2 between the Trees and the Factories. After a few minutes we checked how much CO2 there was in the atmosphere. Not much. Then we "cut down" half the Trees and turned those Scouts into Factories. They used the carbon they had gathered in their "timber" to make more CO2 and, at the end of the game, we checked the final amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This time, there was lots. The Scouts had fun and understood that we need trees (as well as oceans, rocks and lots of other parts of the natural environment) to maintain a healthy atmosphere and prevent runaway climate change.

 After this game, the Scouts sat down and sorted through a pile of forest products - from ecosystem services like nutrient recycling and water treatment to traditional economic products like timber, latex, cocoa, etc. They deduced that the diversity of a forest is of greater value than the limited agricultural produce that can be grown on deforested land.

 

I wrote this up and sent it to Rosie Teasdale at the FSC , with a couple of photographs. Rosie got back to me a few weeks later and told me that our Scouts had won their competition and asked me what prizes they would like!  I was delighted to hear this, of course, and asked whether anyone from FSC could come to our Scouts and present the prizes in person.  

So it was that Charles Thwaites, the head of FSC-UK, joined us last night and congratulated the Scouts on winning the FSC Friday competition.  He handed out a number of FSC-branded goodies and awarded the Scout Group a beautiful clock, made from sustainable hardwood, as a permanent trophy. He ran an enthralling role-play exercise, modelled on his experiences at a global forestry conference in Cape Town last week.  

Three groups of six Scouts took the parts of loggers, indigenous people and environmentalists.  They were given 10 minutes to come up with the Top Three things that they wanted to achieve from negotiations with the other parties.  Each group's representative read out their three requirements and placed them on a table, each on a separate slip of paper.  Once all nine requirements had been shared, the groups took it in turns to remove two slips of paper, leaving a final set of three "agreed" outcomes.

Two of the three remaining outcomes were proposed by the Indigenous Peoples and the third was from the Environmentalists.  Although none of the Loggers’ requirements were agreed, they were happy enough to accept that their products would command premium prices because they could be marketed as sustainable timber and their investment in local communities and conservation would enhance their reputation as responsible businesses. 

Their three agreed outcomes were:

1. Sustainable logging restricted to 20,000 trees a year
2. Loggers to supply Food, Water, Education and Healthcare for every village
3. Loggers must plant more trees than get cut down

All this serves to illustrate just how interested - and motivated - teenagers can be in protecting the future of Earth's natural environment. They have a lot less trouble than adults taking complex issues on board and reaching consensus on co-operative solutions. Of course, these exercises are gross oversimplifications but the level of excitement in the room showed just how engaged the Scouts can become in sustainability matters. These are the people who will be making a difference in the coming decades, both in their personal behaviour and in the influence of their careers on the success of the next generation in tackling the wider, long-term issues of climate change, biodiversity and protection of human rights.

http://www.fsc-uk.org/about/news/82/most-innovative-fsc-friday-event/

 

The second prize was for a competition I entered on Yahoo! Answers. They asked the question, "Now that autumn is getting a little colder, how do you plan to keep warm without wasting too much energy?"  I spelled out the details of my own investments in energy efficiency and solar thermal, explaining that I funded these by selling my car and that, while I did not expect them to pay back financially in the short term, my reason for making these investments was to reduce my carbon footprint.  You can read my answer here:

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20081021090656AAFg8II

I was delighted, once again, to learn that my response was chosen as the Best Answer and I am now looking forward to receiving the valuable prize - a wooden double bed made from FSC-certified timber and a handmade orthopaedic mattress.  That certainly enhances my prospects for a return on my investment in sustainability, in an entirely unexpected way!

 

Reducing oil consumption

Here are my thoughts on reducing our use of oil while we still have some left to play with!

New Scientist (4 July 2007, "Biorefineries: curing our addiction to oil") reports that over 70% of the oil we extract is used for transport fuel. Most of the remainder is burned for energy (and this without including natural gas, another fossil carbon) or used for roads, lubricants and waxes. Just 3.4% is used in the petrochemical industry, to synthesise all the materials we depend on in our everyday lives - e.g., plastics, cosmetics, paints and medicines. Wouldn't it make sense to cut down the 90-odd percent that is used for energy and save the oil for petrochemical manufacture? If we were to do this ahead of "peak oil" then the feedstocks that we need for the synthetic chemical industries could last for centuries.

It is comparatively easy to switch electricity generation over to renewables, including woodchip and pellet technologies used for industrial "cogeneration" or combined heat and power (CHP). Slough Trading Estate has been doing this for several years so your UK Mars Bars are made using sustainable energy. This type of biofuel makes sense and does not compete for agricultural resources with food supply. The biggest problem will be scaling up the supply of woody fuel - perhaps an argument for restoring some of Britain's native woodland cover that was displaced by farming?

It is much harder to make the switch to renewables for the transport fuel we all depend on because few other materials have the energy density of petrol or diesel. Plug-in hybrids could help, if recharged from renewable electricity, but hybrid cars today are really no more than green window-dressing to enhance the reputations of the world's largest car manufacturers, while they continue to flog Chelsea tractors, SUVs, pickups and luxury limos.

Whether it's ethanol from sugar cane ('gasohol' in Brazil) or biodiesel from oilseed crops, production of biofuels for transport displaces food production (witness the soaring price of bread). More importantly, to meet the current transport fuel demands of the developed world, biofuel would have to supplant food production entirely - and then some more!

There is an overwhelming need is to change the way we use transport - both personal and freight. That's a very tall order but nothing else comes close to providing a sustainable solution.

Energy efficiency, both domestic and industrial, offers huge prizes but is barely beginning to be tapped here in England because energy is still far too cheap. There is loads of advice available on improving our domestic energy and I will post the best links I can find to help with this. Retailers and manufacturers have much scope to cut their energy consumption but the economics will need to change before they pay more than lipservice to these opportunities. Massive hikes in the price of oil and gas would drive energy efficiency but this is not going to win elections anywhere in the world and so seems unlikely to happen before we reach peak oil.

Solar thermal power is already highly efficient - vacuum collector tubes can capture over 90% of the solar energy reaching them. Rooftops around the world should be covered in them already but - outside of Germany - they are not.

Solar electricity generation, in contrast, uses only up to 15% of the incident energy. There is plenty of room yet for technological innovation, both the physics of solar energy capture and the manufacturing processes used to produce photovoltaic panels in large quantities and at low cost.

Even nuclear fission is ultimately unsustainable because the uranium reserves are limited and the environmental and human costs of uranium mining are very high. If we could tame nuclear fusion as an energy source we would really be getting somewhere!

Light bulbs

The first thing that seems to spring to mind when you mention carbon is changing your lightbulbs. That's good because it's easy and, once you've done it, it takes no further effort.

A lot of people though, including Tesco's Sir Terry Leahy, have pointed out that we can't just BAN high-energy lights because they are not suited to all situations, a lot of current light fittings won't use them, etc. How far is that true?

Energy-efficient bulbs for the standard bayonet (BC) or screw (ES) fitting are now sold for under a pound in supermarkets, department stores and the like. They are longer than their equivalent high-energy bulbs, however, so they might not fit your existing lampshade or luminaire. In that case, you need to get hold of the tiny little energy-saving bulbs that are now available from online retailers - I've listed some below - for even the small bayonet (SBC) and screw (SES) fittings. They work really well. Yesterday, I replaced a 40 watt tungsten "golfball" bulb, 95mm-long, with an energy-saving equivalent that is 5mm shorter and 35 watts lighter.

Unfortunately, these non-standard energy-saving bulbs cost £4 - £8 each which is a big barrier to replacing all the tungsten bulbs in your home.

Halogen downlighters and spots are the very epitome of modern lighting. Bright and affordable, they claim higher efficiency than regular tungsten filament bulbs. In practice, they are highly directional so that many more bulbs are needed to light a room than with traditional bulbs.

Just before I started to think about energy efficiency, I fitted 12 mains-powered halogen bulbs in a long, narrow utility room at home. I think this stupid deployment of 600 watts was the first thing that made me feel guilty about my household energy consumption. Fortunately, I discovered Megamann 7 watt compact fluorescent spots and spent a hundred quid reducing this figure to 84 watts.

Sad to say, these are only available for 240v lights so I don't think we can do anything practical yet to replace all those 12 volt halogens our homes are filled with.

I have just tried out some 1 watt LED replacements for the little 10 watt halogen bulbs with two metal legs coming out of them (called G4 capsules). They were £5 a piece, very fragile (I broke two), difficult to fit and produced negligible illumination with a ghastly mains flicker.

Furthermore, the power consumption of the transformer supplying 12 volt DC to the 1 watt LED was still 15 watts, so the real saving was 50% rather than the 90% I had hoped for.

My next stop was the lounge and dining room, with a grand total of 17 matching wall and floor lights, each using 40 watts. The Omicron replacements, at 5 watts each, have cost me £140 but they are saving 600 watts between them.

My latest discovery is energy-saving striplights, to replace those long filament bulbs built into bathroom mirrors, furniture and under kitchen cabinets. The 221mm bulb uses 5 watts rather than the 30 watt incandescent bulb: the 284mm one uses 7 watts in place of 60 watts.

How about Tesco start piling them high and selling them cheap so that we can all switch more of our lights over to energy-efficient bulbs?

In the meantime, please check out these online retailers and buy all the energy-saving bulbs you need, and can afford, to replace your high-energy incandescent lamps. I have been happiest with BLT Direct because their prices are fair, they deliver quickly and they handle returns very efficiently.

http://www.bltdirect.com/

http://www.ebulbshop.com/

http://www.toplightco.com/acatalog/Energy_saving_lightbulbs.html#a25_20watt_20Daylight